EMA Blog: Business Intelligence and IT Management

IT operations managers are cringing all around the world – desperately trying to avoid those inevitable words from their executive management: “You need to support enterprise mobility.” Their concerns are understandable. After all, IT administrators are already overtaxed with supporting desktop, server, application, and infrastructure management requirements. Asking them to layer a whole new management discipline on top of that can be a daunting prospect. IT managers who find themselves in this predicament often recognize it as an opportunity to practice the fine art of procrastination. Particularly skilled procrastinators will employ one or more of the following excuses:

IT marketing hype has generated quite a few ridiculous and sometimes outright bizarre phrases to describe trends in technology adoption, but few on the list of the absurd top the insistence that we live in a “post-PC” era. The concept of “post-PC” derives from the (correct) fact that mobile device adoption has broadly accelerated, but makes the incorrect assumption that this is causing a substantial decrease in PC use. Nothing could be further from the truth – especially in relation to the business use of desktop and laptop PCs.

IT as a Service is one of the hottest topics these days. In a nutshell, it entails the radical alignment of all IT disciplines around strategic business requirements. Instead of having to beg IT for resources and services, as many of us are accustomed to, we can now pick all the resources and services from an easy-to-use online catalog. Workload automation features are finally becoming part of this service catalog, allowing business users to trigger, monitor, and even repair essential job flows.

For our Enterprise IT clients, we deliver in-depth research and practical advice to help them make better decisions, succeed with key projects, and align IT with business objectives. For our IT Vendor clients, we provide the deep insight required to build the right product, reach the right prospects, and establish credibility in the marketplace. This means that – unlike many firms – EMA is both in tune with how real-world IT organizations are applying IT and data management technology to solve business problems and intimately familiar with the pros and cons of available vendor solutions. Our dual focus arms us with the insight to help both audiences be more successful!